bakes

Hi all,

I am in the middle of a major battle with my local Toyota Service department. I took my superchargered 1996 4runner in for service because it was bogging and surging and often misfiring.

To make a long story short, it took the service team 55 hours to determine the harmonic balancer retaining bolt had loosened causing damage to the key way on the crankshaft. I am no mechanic so I have no idea how hard that would be to diagnose. They reduced the final bill down to 28 hours but I am still struggling to see why this took them so long to diagnose?

I am filing complaints with Toyota Canada and BBB to see if I can get my bill reduced.

Keep the flaming to a minimum please and give me your thoughts on how difficult that issue should have been to diagnose?

MTL_4runner

Wow.....that definately sounds very excessive. In real time that means they had 1 mechanic working on that vehicle for a little less than a week and a half......FULL TIME (8 hr days)! The crank bolt loosening has happened to a few other members on the board and I don't know how long it took them to get it diagnosed themselves (and these people are not professional Toyota mechanics) but I seriously doubt it was more than 2-3 full days (usually people can only work on the vehicle for 1-2 hrs per work day). Now when you're talking about diagnosis time, it is always subjective and obviously depends on the experience of the mechanic(s) involved. When was the last time you had your timing belt done and who did it? You might want to give them a little jingle and tell them the bill's on the way for fixing this mess as well.


Here are a few threads where it happened to others:
https://www.yotatech.com/forums/f2/help-my-crankshaft-pulley-wobbelin-79429/
https://www.yotatech.com/forums/f116/lesson-learned-pics-76293/
https://www.yotatech.com/forums/f2/crank-pulley-wobble-88872/

bakes

Timing belt was done 3 years ago so I can't see it being the issue. If they had not tightened the bolt to spec surely I would have had issues sooner.

The dealership went so far as to say that I should not have the supercharger on a 1996 4 runner as Toyota does not recommend it?? Why would they sell the supercharger for that year if that were the case?

Apparently my harmonic balancer bolt loosened to the point the key way slipped or something and that cause the timing to go which resulted in the poor idling.

I agree that it really should not have taken quite so long...we'll see what happens.

MTL_4runner

I call total BS on the dealer for that comment......completely ignorant (that's an "I have no clue why that happened so I'll look for a scapegoat" type of comment or perhaps they were worried you'd come back after them for having done the timing belt previously). The recommendation from TRD was because of the ECU on the 96 trucks, not anything mechanical.

If the bolt comes loose, the crank pulley will inevitably damage the key and crank during normal driving use......it is not an if, rather when it will happen. It is hard to say exactly how long it would take to work itself loose if improperly torqued (to 184 ft-lbs instead of the 217 it should have been.....there have been errors printed in manuals to this effect). Has anyone work on that area of the engine recently (ie timing belt, waterpump replacement, etc)?

mt_goat

Wow, is right! I can't hardly believe it. Wasn't it pretty noisy up in crank shaft area? Sounds like they are ripping you good.

That's because the earlier trucks didn't have the ECU programed to handle the fuel needs of the SC. But even the later trucks will run lean without extra fuel mods and you can make it work too with some $$.

third4runner

The issue of the amount of time spent diagnosing is not the issue. Driveability problems are sometimes very difficult to diagnose. Before they started, how much time and money did you authorize? Did you sign the repair order? If they told you it would be an hour, or any other amount less than the amount that they eventually spent, then you have an issue. If they kept in touch with you during the process, and you authorized more and more time, then they did it right. As far as your complaint to TCI, they will probably not get involved, but it can't hurt. Either way, that bill would suck to pay!

MTL_4runner

I agree, but there is a fine line between being authorized for unlimited hours of diagnosis and milking the customer. Even if they were authorized, it could still be proven that the dealership took far more time for diagnosis that should have been required via the FSM (which they are supposed to be following).

rocketjr

I just came across this thread. I also just went through finding out the bolt was not tightened properly. My new shop (not the one that did the timing belt) took maybe 5-7 hours?? or so to diagnose. I'll have to check the bill. Anyway, the shop that changed the timing belt did it one year ago in August and I have about 15,000 miles on it since. The problems started gradually and I changed spark plugs, wires and some other easy things to try to fix it as I didn't know what was causing the problem, but when it got worse I took it to the shop and here is what they pulled out:

So anyway, the owner at this shop said he would write a statement saying my worn crankshaft (that needs replacing) is a direct result of poor workmanship on the part of the other shop/mechanic and that court may be an option for me to pay for this huge bill I'm gonna have.

What do you guys think? Do you think I have a case?

And I called the first shop and the owner was very condescending (me being a girl seemed to have a lot to do with it) and said it was not their fault and if there was a mistake in the tightening of the bolt, it would have failed in the first week....And it's been over a year and 12,000 miles, so no go.

mt_goat

Welcome to Yotatech, and I'm so sorry to see yet another poor person having to deal with this problem.

I'm no lawer, but I feel like you may have a case. However I'm thinking that Toyota corp, or whoever is responsible for the publication the factory service manual (FSM), is more at fault with this problem rather than the shop that did the work. That's because the FSM has a printing error regarding torque spec for the crank bolt. In my 2001 Toyota Tacoma FSM there is two different torque specs for torquing this bolt depending on what section of the FSM you're looking at, so obviously one of them is wrong.

My first question to the shop that did the work would be "what did you torque the crank bolt to?" If they say to you 217 ft-lbs, no case, forget about it. If they say anything less than that, ask them where they got that spec and try to get it in writing.

I have it from a factory trained Toyota tech that when Toyota first started making the 5VZFE engine (1995) the torque spec for the crank bolt was 184 ft-lbs, but Toyota had a problem with the crank bolt loosening up from the factory so they later after a few years increased the torque spec to 217 ft-lbs.

Appearantly when printing the newer FSMs they didn't changed the torque spec in every part of the manual, so some places still have the wrong spec printed. I've also heard that this wrong spec is in the computer system that is used by most of the auto repair shops to look up repair infomation.

mt_goat

This is probably accurate if the bolt wasn't tighten at all (like the mechanic put it on finger tight and forgot to put the torque wrench on it). But if he tighten down pretty good (like maybe 184 ft-lbs) I could see it taking years to work it's way loose.

rocketjr

Would the mechanic even remember what he tightened it to--since it's been a year? And couldn't he just say he tightened it to the 217 ft-lbs because he's looked into it after I called and wants to try to cover his ass? This whole thing just sucks...
Julie

mt_goat

Well yeah he probably won't remember the spec off the top of his head, so like you say he'll go look it up and if his source has the wrong spec he probably thinks that 184 ft-lbs IS the correct spec.

mt_goat

Oh my....and another one bites the dust: http://www.4x4wire.com/forums/showfl...5&o=14&fpart=1